Some here don't know the legal definition of genocide. This may help.
By Luke Peterson
Yes, Israel is committing genocide.
What we are witnessing now is the extension of the program of national erasure against the Palestinians that the Zionist project has always entailed, at times overtly, but more often covertly.
As defined by the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2, it consists of “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:”
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The law protects national groups such as the Palestinians when they are targeted “as such,” i.e. for being Palestinians.
Scholars note that “The ‘in whole or in part’ means that there is no lower limit to the number of people on which these acts may be committed. It is genocide even any of the Acts (a)-(e) are on one person with the intent described.” That is, it is not necessary that large numbers of persons be killed for a policy to qualify as a violation of this convention, though in the present Gaza campaign alone one in a thousand residents of Gaza has been killed by the Israeli military (the equivalent of killing 310,000 Americans). The Israeli military deliberately knocked out the Gaza Strip’s only electricity plant, making it impossible for water purification plants to operate and so depriving most Palestinians of potable water. Infants and toddlers are at special risk of mortality from dirty water. The conditions of life imposed on the people of Gaza are indisputably causing serious mental and bodily harm.
Ordinarily the Israeli campaign against the Palestinians is creeping and deliberate, involving processes of detention, and restriction: the abject denial of basic human rights and dignities that is integral to political and military occupation. It is “incremental genocide” (to borrow a phrase from the scholar Ilan Pappe).
Is Israel Committing a Genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza Informed Comment
